Afraid to Open My Eyes
by Dimitri A
Summary: Toby really doesn’t care that Rick is dead. Doesn’t care so much he wishes he was dead too.


Afraid To Open My Eyes (Because of what I'll Find)

I don't own anything that you can plainly identify.

Author: Dimitri A

Dedicated: To everyone who was pleased, confused, or disturbed by 'Light at the End of Your Tunnel'.

Rating: I'd say…Pg-13.

Pairings: Toby/Rick and JT/Liberty.

Warnings: Slashy, angst ridden, disjointed and jumpy. Don't like as much as the first, but I still enjoyed. Toby's head is fun.

Notes: Soooo…I was in a really weird place and decided 'Light at the End of Your Tunnel' needed a follow up. And that the Toby who is demanding my attention in the deep dank recesses of my imagination needs a little Prozac but I digress.

Also I find that JT/Liberty is a het pairing I can support. Those two are just so adorably geeky together, like Toby/Rick are adorably dysfunctional and twisted. I didn't know I could actively support heterosexual activity, so I've learned something new about myself. Yay for personal growth.

Summery: Toby really doesn't care that Rick is dead. Doesn't care so much he wishes he was dead too.

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Afraid to Open My Eyes

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Toby didn't care that he was dead. Not really, not anymore.

Rick had died and Toby had wanted to throw himself out a very high window and turn himself into a bone and organ spotted smear on the sidewalk. Not so much because Rick was dead as because…well, Rick was _dead_.

It was complicated in a way. He was alone again, but not really alone as all of his former friends came flocking back for some reason or another. He'd wanted to snap all of their necks and hide their corpses. Badly. Like in the gym or something.

He hadn't even liked Rick all of the time but he needed him so desperately it scared him sometimes to even think about.

He wasn't sad or heartbroken or in mourning…no, he was actually pretty indifferent. He was indifferent a lot lately; it took too much damn effort to actually give a damn about things in his humble opinion.

It made him tired. He was pretty sure he was going to leave the hospital, sneak into his dad's liquor cabinet in the nondescript fashion only totally trusted and thus ignored children could, and take a very long nap. Sleeping, he'd decided months ago, was a totally legitimate way to spend your time. He'd spent most of the summer sleeping and missed those days with a passion.

After all, things like eating and socializing were highly overrated when you thought about it. Throwing up was unnecessary when you couldn't bring yourself to even eat.

Human contact wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Even the worthwhile human contact was a risky thing to get involved with.

School being back in session meant people expected him to want to do stuff, be involved and do his work and get good grades and give a damn about things he just didn't want to give a damn about. He did it all, moving on something like automatic because years of doing these things made it so easy for him to do now.

He didn't know how some people failed in school, it was almost painfully simple.

He hadn't really wanted to see JT but his dad and step mom dragged him here after school everyday without so much as asking his opinion on the matter. JT was his best friend after all, he'd hit a rough patch, how could he not want to help?

He wished Rick had shot him sometimes.

He was pretty sure that meant he was going to hell, but wasn't positive and so hadn't gotten around to telling his priest about it.

They talked about nothing and Toby lets it all slide over him like the nonsense it is, nothing to be remembered or reflected on later. They don't talk about Liberty or the baby or school or any of the serious shit they should probably be talking about because…well, because what's the point, really?

What's done is done and all that.

Besides, Toby doesn't really care. Things are home were pointless; he'd never thought he'd miss Ashley's presence but now their parents were so wrapped in each other and all of the newfound time they had it was like they'd forgotten he was even there. He had the paper now of course but it was more something to keep him from trying to pluck his eyes out or something 'crazy' like that.

Being alone, with all the time in the world to think, had lead him to want to do some really…not nice and happy things. Things he could never do because he doesn't really have the stones for them. No, he's much too afraid for such things, too afraid to fail and have to deal with the looks and the whispers and the stares.

Toby doesn't think he can take much more staring from people. Not after Rick's little shooting spree (that wasn't really a spree. All of two people had been shot, how could that be a spree?) and subsequent death and it's odd how only reporters and politicians can used words like subsequent and not sound stupid. He'd only thought it and sounded just a little strange to him but at the same time he had to think it like that so…so it was far away.

Big clinical words that could never touch him.

Not like Rick had touched him, no. He could still feel the touches sometimes, under his skin in a place that didn't really exist but couldn't be ignored because it was the sort of place stupid romance novels and fairy tales were founded on.

He hadn't loved Rick, couldn't have loved someone he would never have admitted to being with even if there was a gun being waved in his face. And he figured he kind of meant that in a very literal sense. Rick was the dirtiest of dirty secrets, something he'd deny even to himself one day, he was sure of it.

It's just take a little practice but eventually he'd make Rick nothing more than a hazy dream in the back of his mind, something to hesitate over when he told stories of his school days to his children, but nothing more than that.

He didn't wonder about stupid things like where Rick was now and if he was at peace or if Rick had even spared him a thought when he'd been dying. Toby figured if he'd _loved_ Rick he'd think about things like that sometimes, but since he didn't he couldn't have.

Sometimes he thoughts things like 'Why didn't he shoot the right people' and 'why didn't I have the guts to do something like that'. He'd wondered why Rick hadn't trusted him. Of course those are very not happy and fluffy thoughts and thus totally not appropriate for him to be thinking.

Like when he'd found out JT had tried to kill himself, or at least managed to OD and come close to death, and had only managed to think 'I wish I could risk it'.

Rick had touched something in him he'd never be able to shake. Made him…almost happy at times, even though nothing between them should have breed any kind of happiness in the least. It'd been wrong, the very embodiment of wrong and he missed it so much there were times he thought he might just collapse or scream or…something stupid and dramatic.

Rick was so…so much a part of him, so deep inside of him that sometimes it hurt without him. Sometimes darkness seemed to grow around him, reach up and threaten to pull him into some kind of abyss and it would seem so damn inviting that he knew he was loosing it. Sometimes he'd be stretched out in his bed and wished he could will himself to be nothing.

God to be nothing…

He couldn't really breathe anymore.

"Toby? You in there?"

He blinked at JT then smiled thinly. "Yeah man. Zoned."

"Obviously." His shadow was a pale imitation of what it should have been, voice raspy and full of hurt he wasn't going to talk about. That wasn't why Toby was here, to hear about his problems and fuck ups. Nope, that wasn't his presence in JT's life.

He was okay with that.

"You say something?"

"Asked if you heard from Ash."

"Got a postcard. She's good."

Then again he supposed being freed from your bi-polar boyfriend would make anyone feel quite a bit better. Unless you were crazy too, in which case you just wanted to crawl into a dark corner and die a very quiet and solitary death.

Not that he'd wanted to do that or anything. Nope, he was fine.

Once upon a time in a land far away Ashley had been the dysfunctional one.

He sits with JT a while longer then leaves. His father won't be there for another thirty minutes and he isn't in the mood to not talk to the man on the ride home. He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked, one foot in front of the other until watching made his eyes water.

He got home eventually, wishing he was anywhere but, and said something to his father who'd been about to leave to get him. They talked and Toby had no idea what either of them was saying even though he was standing right there, mere feet from the other man. A hand was put on his shoulder, his stepmother and it felt like nothing. Like air.

He went to his room, shut the door, and collapsed onto his bed, curling around his pillow and shutting his eyes, wishing he were nothing.

No, Toby didn't care that Rick was dead. Didn't mind that he couldn't pretend to be normal anymore, that his pieces and edges weren't sharp enough to bleed, and that all of the thoughts in his head made sense. It didn't bother him that Rick had stolen the only piece of **real** he'd had left and even kind of let himself believe it. It didn't matter that Rick had **lied** to him in a way, had made him believe that maybe there was a way that it was okay.

Sure, he was falling apart and going crazy and fashionable things like that but he'd been doing that before he and Rick became friends. He'd been doing it while they were friends.

He was just doing it a little faster now.

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This…has no point. Don't judge me! Anyway, it's not really as…coherent or focused as the first one, not that it was coherent, focused, or had a point. I think maybe it'd be darker if Toby were in there somewhere. Because he isn't. I don't know where the hell he is, to be sure, but it isn't in his head. So it's less dark and more…'wtf?'.


End file.
